Plant Story -- Beautiful Butterflybush, Buddleja davidii

 Butterflybush, Buddleja davidii is a shrub from China. It has long clusters of flowers, purple or rose, lavender or white. They attract butterflies, hence the common name.

butterflybush, Buddleja davidii

Plant Story--Reasons to Like Primroses, Primula species, reposted

Plant Story -- Reasons to Like Primroses, Primula species

reposted and slightly edited from 2014 post. 

common primrose, Primula vulgaris

I had been trying for years to grow primroses, genus Primula. In 2013m stuck three sad little plants, rescued from the nursery’s end-of-the-season stock, into my yard and ooh, in 2014 all three are alive and flowering!

Primrose eliator, from my yard

Plant Story--Silky-leaved Lamb's Ears, Stachys byzantina

Lamb's ears, Stachys byzantina, is a mint brought from Tuirkey, Armenia, Iran, and Azerbaijan in western Asia, to be a garden plant.

lamb's ears, Stachys byzantina

Plant Story--Balloon-Flower, Platycodon grandiflorus, Ornamental, Food, and Medicine

  Balloon-flower is a pretty ornamental from Asia. 

balloon-flower, Platycodon grandiflorus

Balloon-flower is sufficiently unique that there is only one plant in the genus Platycodon, the balloon-flower, Platycodon grandiflorus. It is in the bellflower family, Campanulaceae.

Plant Story--Red valerian, Jupiter's beard, Valeriana rubra, Centranthus ruber

The plant is called red valerian or Jupiter's beard. Here's a picture

red valerian, Jupiter's beard,
Valeriana rubra formerly Centranthus ruber

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Plant Story--Blue Eryngo, Sea Holly, Eryngium planum

Blue eryngo, Eryngium planum, is the most common garden plant in the genus Erygnium. The eryngiums are a group of some 250 species native from southern Europe to Mexico and South America. They are also called sea holly. 

Eryngium planum, blue eryngo, sea holly

Plant Story--Colorful Petunias for Summer Gardens

Petunias are everywhere: in summer street plantings, in decorative pots, in hanging baskets. And yet, petunias are anonymous. Poor petunia, we barely notice you.

red petunias

Flowers of Early June

My blog for this week, on petunias (Petunia), is running way behind. So, how about a post celebrating  early summer flowers? 

Blanket flower, Gaillardia (sunflower family, Asteraceae), below, is native to North America. There are 12 species, but only two are widespread, Gaillardia aristida and Gaillardia pulcella. The first is in the western and northern North America, the second in eastern and southern. Gaillardia xgrandiflora is their hybrid. I've seen them growing in gardens from Oregon to Florida, and if you were out hiking now, you could find wild ones in flower, all across the continent. 

blanket flower, Gaillardia

Gardens in Coastal British Columbia

In early August I took a garden tour with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to the cities of Vancouver and Victoria in southwestern British Columbia. Garden tours focus on plants; here are miscellaneous highlights.

a bed of coleus and marigolds

Plant Story: Zinnias, American Wildflowers

Zinnias are common and familiar garden flowers, in the genus Zinnia, sunflower family, Asteraceae. They come at the end of the alphabet in lists of garden flowers and indexes. Neither edible nor much of a medicinal, zinnias get little comment beyond "easy to grow."

The more I read about zinnias, the clearer it was they are under-valued.

zinnias, genus Zinnia

Plant Story -- Handsome Maltese Cross, Silene chalcedonica

Maltese cross is a handsome red garden flower, easy to remember once you have noticed it. I learned it as Lychnis chalcedonica but properly it is Silene chalcedonica, although you can find it called Lychnis in many places still.

Maltese cross, Silene chalcedonica

Plant Story--the Lovely, Spicy Nasturtium, Tropaeolum

 Nasturtiums are easily-recognized garden flowers. They have big orange (or red or yellow) flowers with a long spur and interesting round leaves with the stalk (petiole) in the center. They are also edible.

nasturtium, Tropaeolum 

Plant Story--Four o'clocks, Marvel-of-Peru, Mirabilis jalapa

Four o'clocks are flowers I've loved since childhood.

And, since I was a child, what I liked best were the seeds. Big, round with a bulge at one side, such fun to collect! You can see them in the photo below, round black shapes, for example at the base of the flower in the center.

four o'clocks with seeds

Plant Story--Sweet Alyssum, Lobularia maritima

Sweet alyssum is a pretty plant with white to purple flowers, frequently planted in gardens. 

sweet alyssum, Lobularia maritima

It is in the mustard and cabbage family, Brassicaceae, and has the typical simple, cross-shaped flowers. The scientific name is Lobularia maritima, Lobularia from the Latin lobulus, a small pod, and maritima means of the sea, as in maritime. It is native to southern Europe and into west Asia. In places without a winter, it may be perennial, but across North America it is grown as an annual. Seed it in just before the end of spring frosts. Sweet alyssum isn't picky about soil, water, or exposure, (though it doesn't grow well in deep shade or soggy soil), making it very easy to grow. It flowers quickly, will continue to flower all summer, and has a lovely fragrance (if you get your nose down close to the flowers). Under many conditions sweet alyssum will self-sow, scattering seeds that produce plants in subsequent years. 

Gardens of Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

In 2016 I took a late summer garden tour of Philiadelphia and nearby areas with Road Scholar tours. I was born in New Jersey and spent my early years in Pennsylvania and central New York, but I've lived 49 years since in drier places, so I reveled in the greenness and the masses of bright flowers. This post celebrates the beauty of that region.

Plant Story--Beautiful, Invasive Lantana, Lantana camara

Lantana, Lantana camara (in the verbena family, Verbenaceae) is a common ornamental and an easy plant to recognize. It is a tropical American shrub, native to Central and South America. In wild plants, the open flowers in the center of the group are yellow while the older flowers around them are orange. But there were enough natural color variants and related species with flowers of other colors that to grow in your garden you can find lantana with flowers ranging from white and lavender to  pink, yellow orange and deep red. (link)

Plant Story--Lovely Lilacs

Lilac bushes grew in the yards of the houses in which I grew up and I assumed Americans had always had lilacs. After all, Under the Lilacs written in late 19th century New England, was one of Louisa May Alcott’s classical children’s stories. But lilacs are from Eurasia, and the classical lilac-colored lilacs, Syringa vulgaris, are native to eastern Europe. 

The word lilac is derived from a word for blue, though the experts don’t agree quite which language started it. You can read that it comes from Persian and Spanish but those are far from the native range of lilacs so likely not the source. Geographically, lilac is likely from a Balkan language, Albanian for example, but I have found no clear linguistic argument. Since lilac is a color word in English, it has come full circle: the plant was called lilac describing the flower colors and then in other languages, the name of the plant, lilac, became the name of a color. 

Plant Story--Lily-of-the-Valley, Traditional Garden Plant

Lily-of-the-valley is a spring garden flower that I think of as "traditional", growing in long-established gardens of the eastern U.S.

 In Girl Scouts I sang
"White coral bells, upon a slender stalk
Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk.
Oh don't you wish, that you might hear them ring?
That will happen only when the fairies sing."

Added to their sweet fragrance, it made them plants I loved to encounter.

Plant Story--the Merry Periwinkle, Vinca

Periwinkle is an early spring flower that doesn't get much notice. But it has long colorful history.

The name periwinkle is an old English name for a group of plants native to Europe and the Middle East in the genus Vinca. The name periwinkle has been applied to a number of other plants, particularly related plants from the tropics with similarly-shaped flowers (Catharanthus). Periwinkle is also the name of a common seashell (Littorina littorea) and its relatives photos. I'll talk about the two species of perennial, creeping blue-flowered plants, Vinca major and Vinca minor, commonly planted all across the United States and much of Canada. You can find ornamental forms of periwinkle with variegated leaves and with flowers shading from deep blue-purple to white. Vinca minor, the common periwinkle is a little smaller but more winter-hardy than the greater periwinkle, V. major. They are members of the dogbane family Apocynaceae.

Plant Story--Bougainvillea, from Brazil to the World

Bougainvillea is one of the most common and most recognizeable tropical ornamental plants.

"Oh look, there's bougainvillea!"

And then we walk on.

But there's more to its story. For example, it was probably collected for western science by the first woman to sail around the world.